Archibald Murphey Aiken (1888–1971)

Archibald Aiken was a lawyer and
judge of the Danville Corporation Court who opposed desegregation.
During the Danville
civil rights protests of 1963 Aiken gained national notoriety after
confronting the demonstrators and issuing an injunction to ban most forms of public
protest in the city. He convened a special grand jury, which indicted three protest
leaders for conspiring to incite "the colored population of the State to acts of
violence and war against the white population." Controversial, stubborn, and
outspoken, Aiken continued to fight against integration throughout the 1960s. He died
of a heart attack in 1971. MORE...

Map This Entry

Share It

Aiken was born on February 28, 1888, in Danville, the only child of Judge Archibald Murphey Aiken and Mary Ella
Yates Aiken. He attended Danville Military Institute and the Virginia Military Institute before matriculating in the
1905–1906 academic year at the University of
Virginia, where he earned B.A. and LL.B. degrees in 1910 and 1913
respectively. In 1922 Aiken married Corinne Conway, of Danville, and they had one
son. They were divorced in 1942, and Aiken later married Mary Mickley.

Aiken served in France as a captain in the U.S. Army during World War I (1914–1918).
He subsequently returned to Danville, where he was city attorney from 1919 to 1939,
interrupted by interim service in 1921 and 1922 as circuit court judge, the office
his father had once held. Aiken practiced law from 1939 to 1950. From the latter year
until his death he was judge of the Danville Corporation Court.

Aiken was an outspoken supporter of the
state's policy of Massive
Resistance to court-ordered desegregation of the public schools. In 1963 he
gained national notoriety for his handling of civil rights demonstrations in
Danville, which were inspired by the protests then occurring in Birmingham, Alabama,
under the leadership of local African American ministers and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. Beginning early in June, Danville ministers led daily marches
protesting segregation in public facilities and racial discrimination in hiring
practices. Judge Aiken personally confronted the demonstrators on June 5 with an
order to disperse. When they refused, he ordered them arrested. The following day he
issued a sweeping injunction banning most forms of public protest. Danville police
used clubs and fire hoses to assault demonstrators who violated the injunction,
resulting in forty-eight injuries and numerous arrests. Aiken convened a special
grand jury and had the demonstrators' leaders indicted under what was popularly and
incorrectly referred to at the time as "John Brown's Law," a statute reenacted as
recently as 1960 that had its origins during slavery and made it a felony to conspire or to incite "the
colored population of the State to acts of violence and war against the white
population." On June 16, acting in concert with Aiken's response to the protests, the
city council adopted an ordinance essentially codifying the judge's antidemonstration
injunction.

Young civil-rights activists
sponsored by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee converged on Danville
from other places in the South, and by mid-July more than 250 people had been
arrested on various charges stemming from the marches. Judge Aiken established
remarkable rules for the trials of those arrested. He excluded virtually the entire
public, kept a large force of armed police present, required all defendants to attend
roll calls every day, subjected the defendants and their attorneys to daily searches
for weapons, and banned discussion of the constitutionality of the injunction or the
city ordinance. Defense lawyers sought to remove the cases from state jurisdiction
into federal court, an effort the U.S. Department of Justice supported with a brief
criticizing Aiken's conduct and noting that he carried a gun into the courtroom.
Aiken acknowledged that on police advice he carried a firearm to the courthouse, but
he denied carrying arms into the courtroom. The U.S. district courts refused to take
over the trials, and after a long series of state and federal appeals Aiken's
injunction and most of his actions were deemed constitutional, though only by close
votes and over strong dissents in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the
U.S. Supreme Court.

Controversy followed Aiken into the later years of his life. In December 1966, as he
continued to try the cases from the 1963 arrests and to hand down fairly harsh
sentences, W. Leigh Taylor, an executive of a large textile manufacturer based in
Danville, wrote a letter to Aiken criticizing his judgment. Aiken cited him for
contempt and sentenced him to ten days in jail, with eight suspended. This action
drew strong protest in Virginia, including a fruitless call for Aiken's impeachment
from James Jackson
Kilpatrick, editor of the Richmond News Leader. On July
30, 1969, Aiken gained more national attention when he sentenced twenty-year-old
Frank Provost Lavarre to twenty-five years in prison (five years conditionally
suspended) and a $500 fine for possession of a small amount of marijuana. Governor
Mills E. Godwin later reduced
the sentence.

Although events singled Aiken out for national attention, many political leaders of
his generation in Virginia's Southside shared his views on social change. Throughout
the civil rights controversy and after his death, the all-white Danville Bar
Association passed resolutions supporting Aiken and praising his integrity and
devotion to duty. The Danville City Council named a bridge for him in 1970. Aiken
died of a heart attack in Danville on November 27, 1971, and was buried in Green Hill
Cemetery in that city.

Time Line

February 12, 1888
- Archibald Murphey Aiken is born in Danville, the only child of Judge Archibald Murphey Aiken and Mary Ella Yates Aiken.

1906
- Archibald Murphey Aiken matriculates at the University of Virginia.

1910
- Archibald Murphey Aiken earns a B.A. from the University of Virginia.

1913
- Archibald Murphey Aiken earns an LL.B. from the University of Virginia.

1917–1918
- Archibald Murphey Aiken serves as a captain in the U.S. Army during World War I.

1963
- Archibald Murphey Aiken gains national notoriety for his handling of civil rights demonstrations in Danville, which are inspired by the protests then occurring in Birmingham, Alabama, under the leadership of local African American ministers and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

June 5, 1963
- Archibald Murphey Aiken personally confronts civil rights demonstrators in Danville with an order to disperse. When they refuse, he orders them arrested.

June 6, 1963
- Two hundred people demonstrate at the Danville Municipal Building. Judge Archibald M. Aiken Jr. indicts three demonstration leaders for "conspiring to incite the colored population of the State to acts of violence and war against the white population," an 1859 statute enacted after John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry and reenacted in 1960.

June 17, 1963
- The city of Danville adopts an ordinance essentially codifying the judge's anti-demonstration injunction.

December 1966
- As Archibald Murphey Aiken continues to try the cases from the 1963 civil rights arrests and to hand down fairly harsh sentences, W. Leigh Taylor, an executive of a large textile manufacturer based in Danville, writes a letter to Aiken criticizing his judgment. Aiken cites him for contempt and sentences him to ten days in jail.

July 30, 1969
- Archibald Murphey Aiken gains more national attention when he sentences twenty-year-old Frank Provost Lavarre to twenty-five years in prison (five years conditionally suspended) and a $500 fine for possession of a small amount of marijuana. Governor Mills E. Godwin later reduces the sentence.

1970
- The Danville City Council names a bridge for Archibald Murphey Aiken.